Another article, an appeal to the State Legislature, says, "If we
except a few decent young men, sturdy and honest workmen, the bulk is
comprised of rude fellows without any regular calling, lazy clerks, street
loungers, bruisers, and sportsmen who have their pockets full of money
though they never work. * * * There is no actual fire in the City of New
York which does not attract at least one thousand two hundred firemen, and
about as many ex-members with the different companies, the children, the
nincompoops and the thieves. * * * We emphatically affirm--because we have
seen several fires in both London and Paris, and know how they were
disposed of, that the Fire Department of new York is a costly and
ridiculous farce."

When the bill was before the Assembly the following comments were made
in a prominent newspaper:

The bill transforming our city's Fire Department into Paid one, having
passed the Senate by a very large majority, is now before the Assembly on
its third reading. There is said to be danger tht it will be beaten by
bribery. We do not credit the imputation, though without bribery we
are sure it cannot be defeated. And for these reasons:

I.--the insurance companies are necessarily and intimately acquainted
with fire and their extinguishment, and know what methods prove effective
ad what are conducive to needless loss, waste and robbery. And these
companies, with scarcely an individual dissenter, are praying for the
change proposed. Their officers are of all parties and of none; but on the
question they are substantially unanimous. They originated the movement
for a Paid Department; we are but deferring to their judgment in the
premises.

II.--The precedents and analogies are all in favor of the measure. A
village, or small city, in which a fire occurs but seldom, adheres
naturally and properly to the volunteer system; but wherever fighting fire
becomes a business, requiring constant, vigilance and the devotion of a
large share of the firemen's time, it is simply honest and just that they
should be compensated. The very worst way of paying them is to incite them
to pay themselves.

III,--Under the present system five times as many firemen are enrolled
as are actually needed. They thus secure exemption from onerous public
duties, and become members of a powerful organization, which controls
nominations and elections, rewards favorites and takes vengeance on
adversaries. The engine houses are dens of political intrigue, where in
primary meetings re rehearsed and regular nominations
"fixed"--for a consideration. It is the fact which incites the
fierce hostility which the proposed reform encounters. The firemen are the
Janizaries, the Praetorian Guard, of our ruling politicians. They make our
aldermen and councilmen--a bad lot, but this is owing in good part to the
badness of the raw material. To abolish the volunteer Fire department is
to derange the machinery whereby our city is made to pile up such
atrocious copperhead majorities. We do not suppose this will make much
difference in the long run, yet the terror and rage of our governing
classes argue that the placer thus disturbed is a very rich one.
But we want no votes for a Paid Fire Department on any other ground than
that of its intrinsic right.

IV.--The very men who make the most ado in Albany against it are
themselves paid firemen now, and anxious to remain so. The engineers who
insist that firemen should not be paid take good care to be well paid
themselves. The cost of having our fires put out for nothing, including
ground rent, engine houses, engines, trucks, hose, salaries, etc., etc.,
amounts to several hundred thousand dollars per annum; yet we are asked to
consider this an unpaid service.

V.--Our firemen now chose their superiors, who of course cannot control
them. The chief and assistant engineers are made so by votes cast in the
engine houses. This proves fatal to subordination and discipline. If the
chief should prove stern, he will be superseded at the next election.
Hence lawlessness and crime, which are winked at from interested motives.

VI.--Notoriously, our fire Department is a nursery of dissipation and
vice. Large numbers of the firemen sleep or "bunk" at their
respective engine houses. This cuts them off from all home or virtuous
female influence, while exposing them to peculiar and urgent temptations.
Our city is far more debauched and corrupt than it would be but for the
deadly influence which centers in and emanated from our engine houses.

VII.--With the Paid Department we may reduce the number of firemen
four-fifths, while the commissioners, being independent of the firemen,
could enforce discipline, punish rowydism, and expose theft. We shall no
longer squander on fire extinguishment five times the force actually
needed therefor. Vicious boys and rowdies will no longer "run with
the machine" on purpose to steal whatever they can surely hide. We
shall save, by the change proposed, time, money, muscle and morals. And,
while the whole community is signally benefited, nobody will be injured,
unless it be such as clearly ought to be."

Legislators at Albany! What valid reason, not of the greenback
persuasion, can be given for hesitating to pass this bill?

Mayor C. Godfrey Gunther's sympathies with Volunteers are in
legislative crisis were evinced by the following preamble and resolutions
prepared by him, which were adopted by firemen at a meeting at Firemen's
Hall:

Whereas, the threatened passage of the act now pending before the
Legislature of the State, which contemplated the establishment of a Paid
Fire Department in lieu of the present Volunteer system, demands at our
hands an expression of our sense of the unmerited degradation hat is about
to be put upon those comprising the present Volunteer system--a system
that now is, and from time immemorial has been identified and most
intimately connected with the best interests, the development, progress,
and prosperity of the City of New York; and

Whereas, it is evident, in the opinion of this meeting, not only by
the arguments or statement used before the Legislature, by the advocates
of the new system, but by the fact that, without any previous intimation
of the intention to supersede, violently and suddenly, the present system,
without any consultation with its officers to the best means of improving
it where improvements re needed; without even allowing of an opportunity
to test the relative value or efficiency of the teo systems, as well as
entirely ignoring the opinions or wishes of the people of this city, who
are the most directly and the most really interested parties, that it is
intended to degrade the present Department, and, through it, the people of
their city. Be it therefore

Resolved, That we regard the passage of the proposed act as an
unmerited rebuke to men who have, on many occasions, voluntarily periled
their lives in protecting the lives and property of their fellow citizens;
that we regard it as unwise in forcing a new and untried experiment upon
the city, when a failure is certain to be followed by consequences that
may involve a fearless loss in life and property. We contend, that if
intended for the good of the city, and if destined to more effectually to
guard its property and its interests, a gradual introduction of the new
system should be provided for, whereby a test of its advantages over the
old one could be made, a decisive comparison would be instituted, and the
best one of the two be ultimately adopted; we re clearly of the opinion
that it is a willful, positive, and direct interference with, and
usurpation of the rights of the people of this city, who, if they desired
a change, have the power in their own hands, through their immediate
representatives in the city government, to inaugurate a system similar to
that now proposed by the State Legislature; and be it further

Resolved.--In consideration of the above and many other equally
cogent reasons, that we hereby earnestly and fervently yet respectfully
remonstrate against the passage of the proposed bill now before the
Assembly; more particularly at this time, when the present system was
never more efficient, was never better governed or disciplined, and was
never in a more advanced state of subordination to duty; and we also
fervently and sincerely yet respectfully remonstrate against any change in
the present system until it is satisfactorily proven that it cannot be
improved in character and efficiency, and until the change shall have been
asked for by those who are the most intimately and directly
interested--the people of the city--who alone should be consulted and
their consent obtained before making the proposed or any other change in
any department of their own local government.

The Volunteer organs replied sharply to the attacks made on them at
Albany and by the press. One article says:

"So long as the opponents of our present Volunteer Fire Department
system confined themselves to facts, and admitted the sole intention they
has in view was to benefit the existing organization while they did not
expect to make any changes, except perhaps to reduce the force, and
confine it within certain limits, we let them go on, and remained silent.
Since these opponents have taken themselves to argument, and added to
argument vituperation and falsehood, we think it is but just for us to say
a few words about the matter.

"The insurance men have testified to but little. They make
sweeping assertions against the present organization; say that is
cumbersome, expensive, and inefficient, and they believe "the
citizens at large are in favor of the change." * * * these very
insurance men, when steamers were first introduced, were the loudest in
praise of the same. Notwithstanding we foresaw the trouble, and protected
against the introduction of too many machines of this kind, these same
exempt firemen, who had gone into the "policy" business expected
that as steamers were introduced , fires would decrease and the losses
must consequently be quite light. * * * They wanted
steamers--steamers--steamers. They have got them; and what is the result?
The damage done by water at fires in New York amounts to more than that
caused by flame and smoke. * * * In just the same light we regard some of
these insurance men, who, because they cannot be elevated to positions of
trust and responsibility in the present Volunteer Fire Department turn
around and villify it. As investigation is demanded. We can give these
insurance company gentlemen all they ask--and more too.

" A word to the Police Department, who seemed to have joined issue
with the insurance companies. It is a well-known fact that Police
Commissioner Thomas C. Acton, instead of attending to the business he was
appointed to look after, has been bothering his brains over this Paid Fire
Department scheme all last summer, and has asserted he can command the
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, if necessary, to break up the present
organization, and substitute some other plan in its stead. While himself,
Superintendent Kennedy, Inspector Carpenter, and "a number of
policemen" are in Albany, lobbying for this Paid Fire Department
Bill, the good people of the City of New York who pay those individuals
most liberally for wheat little they do, are almost afraid to walk the
street after dark for fear they may be robbed or murdered. * * * When the
violence of he mob was at its height, and not a policeman dared show his
face, did not these gentleman, assisted by certain citizens whom we can
name, drive back the mob, so that the different apparatus could get to
work? Who patrolled the city at night, as a special police, when those
paid for the duty could not be seen? Who drove the thieves and rioters out
of the stores in the principal streets? Who protected the shipping, the
banks, the gas houses, the croton waterworks, the different factories, and
other public buildings, before the national Guard belonging to the city
reached home? We answer, the firemen. * * *

So far as reducing the cost and force of the new York Volunteer Fire
Department is concerned, of improving it in every shape and way, of making
all reasonable and necessary rules and regulations to control the
organization, and make every officer and men in it know his proper place.
we are with the police commissioners, insurance folk, and everybody else.
* * * We admit the mistakes, or misdeeds of certain firemen. We stand up
as no apologist for them, believing that the time has come when these
mistakes can be corrected, and the organization may be improved and
perfected. We feel satisfied that the community at large will sustain us
in trying to retain the present organization rather than inaugurate an
expensive political machine (for such it is intended to be) to gratify a
few men who want office and pay.

AS for doings in Albany, of which too much as already been said, we
care nothing. The business there done may be summed up in a few words.
Some of the metropolitan police went up (we don't know who paid their
expenses) and testified, to what? They thought and believed we had bad men
and bad companies in the Fire Department. The clerk of the Board of Fire
Commissioners was ordered to read, before the committee, in the case of
Engine Companies No. 40 and 53--both wiped out of existence long ago by
the fire commissioners, as evidence of rowdyism. Why did they not go back
to 1840, when fights among fire companies were of everyday occurrence in
New York? * * * Now that a check is placed upon the appropriations, so
that hose companies cannot build three-story brownstone houses to contain
a reel with eight lengths of hose, and foremen cannot go to this or that
alderman and councilman and obtain, through political influence, buildings
and machines which are unnecessary, there is a prospect of curtailing
expenses and securing economy for the future.

"We have yet to learn who authorized the Police Department, the
insurance companies, or the Citizens' Association, to go to Albany and
declare war against a body of men who have sacrificed their health and
time to save the lives and property of their fellow-citizens.

WE have yet to learn if the people pay the police for doing such work,
or whether the insurance companies expect to reap extra dividends in
consequence, or if the Citizens' Association is about to resolve itself
into a committee of the whole for the purchase of political patronage. One
thing we do know, and that is, the firemen of New York have yet to be
heard from."